2003-12-12

Hear ye, hear ye: I have a BIG FUCKING ANNOUNCEMENT to make, y’all. I’ve just heard back about my work visa application and holy shit, I AM MOVING TO FUCKING ENGLAND. In June, for two years. I have five and a half months to get rid of everything I own that won’t fit in two suitcases and find a place to live in Britain.

I’ll be moving to Manchester – my first choice was London, of course, but two hundred and fifty pounds can buy a month’s rent in Manchester, whereas in London it can just about cover a haircut and a packet of crisps. (Hee – “crisps.” See, I’m already practicing my lingo! “Flush the coke down the bog.” “Put the body in the boot.” Yep, I’m just about ready to be in a Guy Ritchie film.)

This means that any of you, my dear readers, who happen to live in the UK are now my instant best friends. Doesn’t this make you happy? I know that finding random foreigners on my couch always perks up my day.

Until June, however, I must continue to toil away here in Ottawa, where things are decidedly surreal today. I’m at work with no boss. Until the new Cabinet gets sworn in, I have no idea to whom I’ll be reporting: I’m watching the news in my office waiting for some hint about my new employers. What’s even weirder is that it has been more or less officially announced that the department will be split in two, effective immediately – I don’t know which half I’ll end up working for. I could even be out of a job, for all I know. Seriously: I’ve worked for alcoholics, cokeheads, philanderers, and even Greeks, and this is the strangest employment situation I’ve ever found myself in.

There’s nothing for me to do, I guess, but hang attentively on Peter Mansbridge’s every droning word and wait for my immediate future to come into focus. More as it happens.